In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants (1913)

Record Details:

Title:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants
Date:
1913
Publisher:
New York, Appeal Printing Co.
Volume:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants : record volume 2
Leaf #:
00096
Language:
English
Collection:
Early Cinema and Government & Law
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
These seven volumes contain the testimonies and supporting documents from the U.S. District Court's antitrust lawsuit against the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). Formed in 1908, the MPPC (sometimes referred to asœ"the Edison Trust" or just "the Trust") sought to control the American film industry through pooling patents and demanding that producers and exhibitors acquire licenses to those patents. Independent producers and exhibitors, who refused to license the patents, argued that the MPPC was an unlawful monopoly. In 1912 and 1913, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania heard testimonies from both MPPC members, such as Siegmund Lubin, and "Independents" who later became Hollywood moguls, such as William Fox. Ultimately, in 1915, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the MPPC in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and spelled the end for the already weakening MPPC. -- Eric Hoyt, 2012
Date Added:
June 13, 2024
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

714 Louis Rosenbluh, Cross Examination. A. Yes, sir. It depends upon the number of seats that the man has in his theatre, and the possibilities that he has of doing business. Q. And also upon the quality of the goods that you send him, does it not? The age of the film? A. The age of the film has something to do with the makeup. Q. It is a considerable factor, is it not? A. It naturally is. Everybody would like to get new goods if he can, for the same price, provided the subjects are equal. Q. And whether the film is leased or sold to you conditionally, does not make any difference with regard to making up these programs in this way? A. It does to an extent. Q. Is the system in use to-day in the distribution of films, materially different from what it was in 1909, so far as the making of programs for your customers is concerned? A. Yes, sir. Q. In what way? A. There is a larger amount of reels to-day, in a program to-day, and it is necessary to balance them so as to give them a certain amount of drama and a certain amount of comedy, in order to make it blend properly, whereas in the early days, in 1909, there was a limited amount of reels and the public was not so educated as to the kind or program that was exhibited so long as they looked at pictures. Q. What do you mean by a larger amount of reels? Larger amount of subjects? A. No; they used to exhibit two or three reels to a performance. Most exhibitors to-day use five reels to a performance, and a great many use more than five. Q. In 1909, what was the number of films available per week? I mean at the beginning of the year? A. I believe there were fourteen. Of the licensed manufacturers. Q. How many were available to you at that time? At the beginning of 1909? Mr. Grosvenor: By "available," you mean supplied by licensed manufacturers? By Mr. Kingsley: Q. Supplied by the licensed manufacturers? A. At the beginning of 1909, it was about 14. Q. And how many are available to you now by the